Jatasura – Shifting Album Review
Today we are featuring another promising groove/nu-metal band, JATASURA, from Rome, ITALY. We have reviewed their debut album, SHIFTING, along with its character, style, story, potential, and more.
Jatasura is a promising groove / nu-metal band I discovered not long ago with their debut album, Shifting, released as a full-length album on February 26, 2021. Now, please give the album a listen while reading the rest of the article.
Debut albums, for me, have a specific mission that needs to be perceived in a specific way. I have experienced it myself, and only now I can understand everything just like the quote goes; “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Shifting, in this way, is a great-sounding long-play album with 11 songs. I don’t necessarily judge anybody who decided to start their careers with a handful of singles. However, Jatasura earned our respect for doing it in a meaningful way, giving us a hint about their personalities and understanding of music. This is how all the legendary artists built their empires back in time, eventually became icons not only with their great music but mostly because of exemplifying how true artists would do things.
I listened to the album a few times on repeat before writing my review, as I usually do. First of all, I’d like to say that this is a fantastic job for a debut album with its production standards, amount of energy, approach, instrumentation, blend, compositions, and potential. Hands down. When it comes to debut albums, I mainly value musical character, elements that blended (if there’s anything genius or unique about it), the freshness of their musicality, and of course, the story in their theme.
Although the music belongs to a young band, the album was recorded and released recently, and there’s a modern approach to its making; the album surprisingly has vibes from the 2000s from the beginning to the end. This is mostly coming from the overall guitar tunings (drop d tuning if I’m not mistaken), main influences on vocals (I mostly sensed Slipknot/Corey Taylor, Limp Bizkit/Fred Durst, Korn/Jonathan Davis), along with the album sound and compositions.
The album, in general, is quite groovy and dynamic with a delicious blend of Western groove and nu-metal influences. My favorite song, for instance, is Liar, which is the most progressive song in the album, where Jatasura shows their progressive metal potential. Yet, they have decided to keep everything as simple as possible for the rest of their debut project, which is understandable. As you might also remember from some of my previous articles that I am listening to new music every day for more than five years now. Honestly, I don’t quite recall many examples of this kind of musical blend. I believe they have a good chance to evolve and make an impact in the future with their musical character. These Roman gentlemen have the necessary potential, knowledge, blend, approach, and a talented vocalist who can perform both clean and death metal growl.
I often talk about the importance of being aware of strengths and weaknesses for any artist or band. When it comes to our example here, Shifting has only one weakness that I can mention here: almost all songs have so much in common. As a listener, you feel like you listen to the same song after listening to half of the record. A few reasons can cause this, such as the song order in the album, not enough musical creativity, or inexperience. First of all, all those leading influencers of Jatasura in this album have a similar approach. I remember feeling the same thing whenever I listen to an entire album of Korn or Slipknot. On the other hand, I’d like to explain the term I used, “inexperience.” In the Black Album era, Metallica had more than a few similar-sounding songs. The producer Bob Rock approached this issue by working on the song tempos and guitar tunings. This was the main reason they dropped the tuning one or two notes on Sad But True, and placed it right after the album opener Enter Sandman which had album standard tuning.
Technically, Shifting has great standards in general, fantastic standards for a debut album. The album immediately pulls the listener into its world with its energy and mood. Guitars sound fat, vocals sound remarkably polished and mixed, the album has irresistible dynamics which never lose the excitement from the beginning to the end.
When I take all these into account, I’d like to say that I have had a great time listening to Jatasura. Shifting is a great debut album where the band succeeded in showing their true potential while making the impact on its listeners.
I DON’T BELONG has earned its place in our TOP METAL SONGS PLAYLIST!
Please go ahead and check out the links below if you’d like to find out more about the artist/band, follow them on social media, subscribe to their channels to show your support, and not miss any upcoming releases.
Jatasura – Shifting Album Review | Metalhead Community | Heavy Metal Blog | Metal Music Magazine
In conclusion, Metalhead Community Team congratulates JATASURA for their successful debut, SHIFTING and wishes them the very best in their future careers. Thank you for reading.
